MADISON, Ill. (May 2, 2010) - Craig Treble rode the Valvoline Motorcycle Oils Suzuki Pro Stock Motorcycle to a quarterfinal finish today at the 14th annual NHRA Midwest Nationals at Gateway International Raceway, located just over the bridge from St. Louis.
He and crew chief Steve Tartaglia came out strong in qualifying for the event, in which Treble had finished runner-up twice, securing the No. 2 spot after holding onto No. 1 for a day. But an engine blow-up during Saturday's qualifying and another engine change today set them back during eliminations.
Treble defeated Wesley Wells in the opening round with a 7.010-second lap at 190.81 mph, as Wells red-lighted, then met up with Eddie Krawiec in the second round. Despite a .008 reaction time to Krawiec's .028 (.000 is perfect), Treble's 7.058/189.39 was no match for Krawiec's 6.979/190.83. Treble lost the contest by .0598 of a second.
“The Valvoline Suzuki was off in eliminations. After we blew up that motor in qualifying we seemed to have lost our tune-up," said Treble. "It’s still in there, but it’s a hard thing to find and that was our third motor of the weekend. We lost compression in one cylinder. I don’t know if we scuffed up the piston or what, but we noticed it right after first round, so we were fairly excited going into second round, thinking, OK, we had a scuffed piston, we went a low .0, so maybe we got something for it in the second round.
"I don’t know. It just didn’t go down the track like we wanted it to, so we’re back to the old drawing board! Maybe we can go do some testing and get a better handle on it."
Next up for the PSM class is the 30th annual Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Southern Nationals in Commerce, Ga., May 14-16.
UNOFFICIAL POINT STANDINGS, after four events:
1. Hector Arana, 366
2. Eddie Krawiec, 318
3. Matt Smith, 296
4. Michael Phillips, 275 (winner today) - LE Tonglet was runner-up
5. Andrew Hines, 252
6. Craig Treble, 227
7. Karen Stoffer, 202
8. Steve Johnson, 190
9. Shawn Gann, 181
10. David Hope, 174
